Pleasant reading for students of technological history, but radio buffs may be disappointed with Weightman’s light treatment...
A middling account of Guglielmo Marconi’s development of the “wireless telegraph”—the radio.
Whether that invention is the “most fabulous” of the 19th century is most arguable, of course, and radio would not come into its own until well into the 20th. Still, British journalist Weightman (The Frozen Water Trade, 2003) offers a bright portrait of Marconi, who, with the patronage of English scientists (the Italian government having had no interest in his work), demonstrated in 1896 that somehow, through processes he didn’t quite understand at the time, electrical impulses could be captured in his “magic boxes” and made to sound tones. Marconi’s London audience perceived the event, Weightman writes, as something akin to magic: “It was like some fantastic act at a music hall. In fact, those present might easily have dismissed the demonstration as the work of a magician and his assistant, for the young man had a suspiciously exotic Italian name, although he looked and talked like a smart Londoner about town.” Only later did Marconi realize that these signals could be charged with meaning, by which time he was in competition with several other inventors to establish standards and networks for the “wireless telegraph” and reap the rewards. Those inventors, among them Robert Marriott and Reginald Fessenden, were performing wonders in the early 1900s, establishing radio links between distant points, and the Marconi Company had its work cut out for it just keeping up with these rivals. Still, Weightman notes, when the Titanic sank in 1912 it sent out not the “SOS” of those competitors, but the Marconi system’s “CQD”—“seek you, distress.” And, for all his struggles, Marconi died wealthy and world-renowned—though, sadly, an apologist and de facto ambassador for the Mussolini regime.
Pleasant reading for students of technological history, but radio buffs may be disappointed with Weightman’s light treatment of technical matters.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-306-81275-4
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Da Capo
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2003
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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